Merchants & Marauders (Z-man games)
Merchants and Marauders (Z-man Games)
Introduction: Arrr ye weevil eating, seasick, scuttle hound! Pass the side arm for a wee dram of rum. Merchants and Marauders is the Caribbean adventure form Z-Man games. You can choose between being a pirate who unleashes his greed over the Caribbean sea, and is constantly pursued by the island’s imperial overlords: The French, The Dutch, The English, and The Spanish. Or if ye wish, you can be a humble Merchant who sales his wares from bay to bay to the highest bidder.
Components: What first caught my eye about this game is the beautiful board. It is a stunning presentation from the northing edge of modern day Venezuela to the Caribbean Islands that line up in a curving motion to the uppermost of the islands modern day Cuba and Nassau. The board breaks up the Caribbean in to different expanses so if you’re a scurvy dog and wish to steal for your money you can scout for innocent merchants, or if you’re the gentlemen merchant you must quietly sail from different parts of the sea to avoid the pirates finding your location.
The Board
Game Play: Early on you randomly dealt a Captain card and you get to decide whether you want to be a captain of a slope a faster little ship commonly used for pirating, or a flute which is a little bit bigger and slower ship with cargo space for a good merchant. Another fun twist is that you might end up a male or female captain of the various nationalities. Also each captain has one special trait that they have an influence on different aspects of the game, or are better at handling on including the weather!
All the landing location is the more famous ports of call along those islands. You can only imagine the historical significance of these ports had in the 17th and 18th century. Names like Port Royal, Tortuga, Havana, and Caracas bring sailing to them and its game play to life.
Most of the players turn is spent in the port where pirates and the like can:
- trade goods
- buy goods
- fix their ships
- upgrade their ship in the shipyard
- recruit replacement crew
- seek to answers rumors
- work on a quest
Player Board
Battles: Battles Between players and NPCs take a more elaborate angle and happen with rolling of six sided dice that have skull and crossbones for the upper two numbers 5 and 6 (Usually your skill is the number of dice you roll and each skull and crossbones is a success). Fighting is grim business at long distance you fire into the hull, crew and blast to bits other parts of your opponent’s ship. A good captain figures out his strengths and uses the best techniques for victory. A charismatic leader may use a scatter gun and board his opponent’s ship. Where a Captain with good seamanship may sink his opponent from a distance with all his on-board canons (In the games the number of canons are representative since ships in the day could have up to 40 or more, and the game you tend to have six or less).
You can buy special weapons like the chain-shot which is a chain stretched between two cannon balls to take down opponents masts, or if more to your liking a grappling hook to pull other ships closer for boarding if your better at fighting hand to hand and have a sizable crew. If your ship took on sizable damage you can always go back to the shipyard which is a handy place to fix your vessel or upgrade as the case may be.
Raiding NPC merchants relies on the cargo cards for a quicker form of battle that doesn’t slow down the game for other players.
The Boats: The models for the boats are beautiful and bring a lot of interest to the game. You start off with the smallest ship and gradually build up to your dream ship, but you need to be careful there is only one skilled boat builder in the whole Caribbean that can transfer you upgrades to your new ship.
Ships at Sea!
Good: Does a great job transporting you on a sea worthy sailing vessel and keeps all the other thematic elements working. The board & game pieces are solid, lovely art, and maked you wish you were in a hammock on an island paradise.
The long view of the board with the box in the background.
Bad: Pirates tend to have a harder time as this game was played. For every time you attempt to steal from another merchant you had to get more bounty flags, and then more ports close for you while their owners send out ships to hunt you down. It seems if that was the case in war time pirates should be allowed to become sanctioned men and steal from their current enemy (which should remove barriers from returning to their own countries ports if they have a bounty).
I really felt that maneuverability was really underplayed here and that bothered me a little. I think the way you could get your boat into position was a major tactical advantage that was lost a little in this game.
Upgrading to a better ship meant choosing between a Frigate, or Galleon. It was kind of pointless to pick a Frigate because the Galleon beat or tied the states for the frigate except for maneuverability which was way underplayed anyway. The Galleon instead of being the same price should of cost a lot more which it did back in the day!
Conclusion: If I can’t hide it any more then I will say it “I love this game”. The 3+ hours to play can be problematic for some people, but if you have the time and the attention span this is a very good thematic ride.
~ Kevin Wenzel
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